George Lyttelton (1709—1773), created first Baron Lyttelton, was a British politician and statesman and a patron of the arts. He was one of the politicians who opposed Robert Walpole as a member of the Tory party in the 1730s. After Walpole's fall, Lyttelton became Chancellor of the exchequer (1756). He was a friend and supporter to Alexander Pope in the 1730s and to Henry Fielding in the 1750s. James Thomson addresses him throughout his poem The Seasons, and Lyttelton arranged a pension for Thomson.

He wrote Dialogues of the Dead in 1760 and The History of the Life of Henry the Second (1767–1771). The former work is part of a tradition of such dialogues, and Mary Wortley Montagu wrote the last three of the dialogues.